


Five Times Jane Called Cho From Prison (and One Time He Called From a Hotel in Mexico)

by misura



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Community: comment_fic, M/M, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-02
Updated: 2011-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-12 00:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[see title - post season three finale AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Jane Called Cho From Prison (and One Time He Called From a Hotel in Mexico)

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for a prompt in comment_fic, but I lost the link to the prompt ^^;
> 
> (I'm fairly sure the prompt was what I've used as a title, though)

01.

Two empty desks at the office - one cleared out, one not - and Rigsby thinks of all the 'as bad as it gets's and the 'could have been worse's he's imagined. They were none of them like this.

He is, he likes to think, not a complicated guy. It's not that he doesn't understand where Jane's coming from, even if there's been times when he wondered if perhaps it was from outer space. He gets the whole revenge thing though, or thinks he does.

Still, there's laws and rules and proper procedure, and Cho.

When the phone on the not-cleared-out desk starts ringing, Rigsby doesn't pick it up.

 

02.

It's been three days, and every morning ten sharp, Cho's phone will ring. It's not news to Van Pelt that they let people have more than one phone call after arrest. It's not even news that out of all of them, Jane would choose to call Cho.

Even so, given what she knows - given what they all know (even when they pretend not to), she'd have expected Cho to answer.

"Aren't you going to answer that?" Her voice sounds too sharp, too loud. She _trusted_ Jane, is the point, and she's not entirely sure if he's betrayed that trust by doing what he did.

Cho looks like he hasn't slept for three nights.

After another six rings, the phone falls silent.

 

03.

"Talk to him," Lisbon says, softly and (she hopes) gently, because Cho deserves the kind of consideration Jane hasn't spared any of them. She knows what it is to love and get hurt. "You don't have to forgive him - just talk. And listen."

"Why bother," Cho says, his tone so flat it's not even a question. "Not like we need him to tell us why he did it, or where he hid the body. Open and shut case."

"He was your friend." If there's anyone who can claim Jane owes them something, Lisbon thinks it's probably Cho. They all knew about Jane from the start, after all. They all should have seen this coming.

Cho looks at his watch.

"And get some sleep, all right?" One piece of advice she hopes he might actually take.

 

04.

"Cho," Cho says, and it's like everyone else in the office has stopped doing whatever it was they were doing so that they can listen in. Possibly because everyone else in the office has, in fact, stopped doing what it was they were doing so that they can listen in.

One more reason to never get involved in another romance on the workfloor.

"You're a hard man to reach," Jane says, and he sounds like he's smiling, like there's nothing wrong. Perhaps, to Jane, there isn't. Sure, he's in jail, but it's for a crime he felt needed committing. Jane's had his revenge - why should he care what happens next?

Deep down inside, maybe the Jane who joined the CBI isn't really all that different from the Jane who pretended to be a psychic in order to cheat people out of their usually not-so-hard-earned cash.

"Wrong number," he tells Rigsby, who's the only one to actually react when he puts down the phone again, cutting off Jane in the middle of a silence that was probably supposed to put him in the right frame of mind for something or another - Rigsby blinks, and opens his mouth, but doesn't actually speak, because Rigsby isn't an idiot either.

 

05.

Jane doesn't know how phoneline psychics do it. Maybe they don't; maybe the trick is just to have complete strangers ring you up so they can tell you all about their problems so you can reassure them with platttitudes and cliches about 'handsome strangers' and 'help from an unexpected quarter'.

He's given up his wedding band for Cho. He thought that would be enough. It never occured to him to give up revenge, too. He'd kill to keep Cho safe, the way he's killed to avenge his wife and child, because that's what you do, when someone hurts those you love.

Well. "Time's up." Prison guards aren't so bad, really, they're not. It helps when you're polite, of course, and even more so when they know what you're in for.

Jane smiles, making sure to mix in a touch of desperation, a smidgeon of 'I'm trying to call my girlfriend, but she's not picking up the phone'. "Could I have just five more minutes?"

He's never been an escapist, really, but he's never been a killer, either, or a prisoner. He's sure he can learn, given the right motivation.

 

01.

"Yeah, okay," Cho says as he puts down the phone.

Rigsby watches the way his hands don't shake. "Was that Jane?" He probably shouldn't ask. Shooting a bad guy's one thing; escaping from prison is another. It's the act of someone who's guilty - and, all right, it's not as if there was ever any doubt Jane did it, but there's guilt and there's _guilt_.

Cho doesn't look at him. "Could be."

They're not on the Jane case. Of course they're not on the Jane case. "So what - you're going to meet him in a hotel in Mexico or something?" He means for it to sound more like a joke.

"Or something," Cho says, opening a drawer and picking up a pair of handcuffs.


End file.
